


Esoteric

by yosjiefo



Category: New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Complicated Relationships, During Canon, F/M, Jealousy, Love Triangles, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29542533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yosjiefo/pseuds/yosjiefo
Summary: Both K1-B0 and Shuichi stand in the hallway towards the Computer Room, neither able to look back inside for fear of who will no longer be there.
Relationships: Iruma Miu/K1-B0, Iruma Miu/Saihara Shuichi, K1-B0 & Saihara Shuichi
Kudos: 11





	Esoteric

**Author's Note:**

> A one-shot I wrote back in October of 2017. This takes place probably not too long after the Chapter 4 trial, and it assumes that Shuichi has completed the Free Time Events for both Miu and K1-B0 prior to Chapter 4.

“I kept a whole memory bank just for my memories of her.”

“Mmhm,” came the reply as a murmur. Shuichi was lost in thought, pensive as he stared down the hall behind his peer. Just down this hall and past that door was the room he had feared stepping back into— fearing the chill of the inevitability that it would be empty.

Miu Iruma would be gone.

“I think— no, I wonder if some of those I should erase,” his companion, K1-B0, spoke out loud again. This felt less like a dialogue and more as a sad sort of musings that he just happened to be allowed to hear. Why? He had no idea, but he did not move an inch as he listened. To move forward would mean to enter the room; to move backwards would mean to never come back.

“Shuichi.”

The sudden confident boom of his name uttered by the robot caused him to jump in his skin, almost as if the name itself were cursed. The detective stood with more attention now focused, turning his head and stammering out, “Y-Yes?”

“People usually talk out their feelings and resolve conflicts as one unit, as a couple, correct?”

An uncomfortable silence pressed them. His breath felt shaky, shakier as his conversation partner’s gaze continued to pierce into him with expectancy. At last, Shuichi finally replied, “Why do you ask?”

“You study people. It seemed like the natural thing to do,” the other male replies smoothly and quickly, not skipping even a beat to offer his sincerity. He’s the opposite of himself,  he thinks: rash, optimistic, earnest no matter what— it’s a puzzle to solve. In the midst of his mulling over it, the other continues, tone ever so slightly more shy as he speaks, “and well… we’re friends, are we not?”

“Right… we agreed,” he trails off.

“We’re equals, and equals— no,  _ friends _ confide in one another.”

“I suppose they do.”

“I see. That just makes me ponder something… something important…” 

The smile that paints the K1-B0’s face seems sad in that moment, the lilt of his voice fading further away as the two continue to talk, or rather, as the other continues to vent and he himself struggles to focus on the words that come out of his mouth because the situation is so delicate that a word too emotional may shatter them. Like a snake biting its own tail, the conundrum presents itself plainly: the emotional weight of days past has thrown him into a frenzy that makes it difficult to carefully pick his words so that he might avoid another crisis. The solution then becomes not to speak cautiously but to instead try not to speak at all.

To passively hurt someone is less grievous than the wound that is caused by actively being the one to plunge the knife and twist it in.

Perhaps sensing that he would not ask for further elaboration on the matter, K1-B0 picks up the breaking conversation himself and attempts to mend it with his words: “Did I not treat her as my equal?”

Her.

They didn’t need to say her name for either to understand just precisely what ‘her’ meant. The vague mention of her existence, or at least of what once was, caused him to flinch. 

The robot stared at him, perhaps hyper-fixated on every small movement he made if the concern welling up in his eyes was any indication, and he knew that he had to speak before the other could ask, ‘ _ Are you okay? _ ’

“I’m sure she thought you two were friends. She seemed really excited when she saw you.”

He remembered the animated vitality that infected her eyes and her voice when she had been given the chance to let her hands explore the other’s body. It was a clandestine tryst he was sure was not meant for his eyes, but just like how her hands roamed his friend, he had roamed around the area and peeked in something he wasn’t supposed to see— something that back then he had given the benefit of the doubt that it wasn’t anything romantic, anything more than just immense curiosity, anything with actual feeling behind it. It was just  _ primal _ , he had convinced himself.

But with the sight of K1-B0 ruminating in the halls, walking up to and then hesitantly away from the computer room where the inventor had been spending all her time as of late, the heavy sighs accompanying attempts of telling himself that she must be doing something important so he could hide the aching loneliness that was surely plaguing him— it all pointed to how wrong the detective had been; something merely base could not be so if one of them had fallen into such a deep hole of infatuation. He wondered if it was the sheer depth of K1-B0’s feelings, how clearly they were etched across his countenance with every expression he made, how naïve he was when it came to matters of the heart but how willing he was to play into them, that drew the inventor to him. 

The thought made the detective want to laugh in defeat, but no voice could come out as his mind swirled. He had half forgotten he was in the middle of a conversation before his peer had reeled him back in:

“Did she? I’m glad…”

_ I’m sure you must be… _

“...but I don’t know.”

Shuichi quirked an eyebrow at this. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” his peer began to fiddle with his fingers as his words faltered, “I don’t think I wanted her to think of us that way, but I’m not so certain. It’s as if there is this huge emotion that overwhelms me when I was around her…”

“I… think you figured it out more or less, actually.”

“Was what I felt towards her… love?”

Shuichi hesitated before he eventually nodded. 

“Is that why I feel so broken when I look down this hallway? Why I’m too afraid to open the door to the computer room and see that even her corpse will be gone— to see that they’ve taken away the last part of her besides my memories?”

“Actually… I feel that way too.”

His friend’s eyes snapped wide open at this confession, but his expression eventually softened with sympathy as he quietly said, “I see.”

And so they both stared a bit longer down the hallway before he apologized. In turn, K1-B0 shook his head.

“If anyone should be sorry or offering their condolences, it should be me. Please forgive me, it’s just that I didn’t think… well…”

Shuichi sighed and eased a pitiful smile onto his face. “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known that… not when we didn’t tell anyone.”


End file.
